Meet ticks, a talking gorilla who wants nothing more than to play drums. Unfortunately, Kurt Busiek and Brent Anderson house him in superhero-centric Astro City, where no one can see past his strength.

Even though it's a little heavy on exposition, Victor Gischler and Will Conrad make "Angel & Faith Season 10" #12 a solid comic as the series marches forward and the mystery of Fred's revival continues.

"Tooth & Claw" #1 from writer Kurt Busiek and artist Benjamin Dewey, with colors from Jordie Bellaire and letters from Comicraft delivers a clinic on how to introduce a new universe filled with stunning characters.

"Angel and Faith Season 10" #2 has Victor Gischler and Will Conrad continue to establish Angel and Faith's new roles now that magic has returned, but you know it's just a matter of time until they intersect again.

Kurt Busiek and Brent Anderson give readers their take on the Doctor Strange and Wong archetypes in "Astro City" #11, and the end result is a charming story on what it means to be a sorcerer's assistant.

"Revenge" #1 by Jonathan Ross and Ian Churchill is a contrived and cliché-filled story about just that: revenge, and is also full of violence, gore, sex and bad language, which would be fine if it had any kind of meaningful story.

Kurt Busiek and Brent Anderson bring back the Broken Man in "Astro City" #5, but while this deliberately jumbled story of story fragments and new
characters might not be to everyone's taste, it holds up well on a re-read.

"Angel & Faith" #18 heats up as Christos Gage and Rebekah Isaacs show the master plan that's been brewing throughout the series -- and in a pleasant change of pace, all the pieces fit together quite well.

Jeff Parker, Christos Gage, and Brian Ching show us a mystical coven in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Willow Wonderland" #3, and pull off an important trick: they make a potentially false happy ending seem real.

"Batman" #14 has Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo continue "Death of the Family" with a dip into the chemicals that created the Joker and other past encounters, but the Joker is changing the rules this time.

As someone who suffered through the original Connor storyline in "Angel," Christos Gage and Rebekah Isaacs show readers in "Angel & Faith" #13 that we actually can have a good story involving the hell dimension of Quor'toth.

Victor Gischler and Paul Lee do their best with "Spike" #1, the start of a spin-off mini-series from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 9," but ultimately it's just a reminder of something that didn't work in "Buffy the Va